Today is the feast of St Theresa of the Child Jesus. I was thinking about that, as I was waiting for Mass to begin. We have a new prime Minister, a vicar’s daughter with a flamboyantly Catholic name. When you think of St Teresa of Avila, the wild visionary, Saint Theresa of Lisieux – the Little Flower with her Little Way – and now Saint Teresa of Kolkata, I hope that Mrs May is guided by her namesakes (well, it is her birthday today – although I am sure that Nanny May can mostly look after herself).

I started thinking about the saints. Some of them – like Saint Theresa of Lisieux – seem impossibly good and hard to emulate. But I take heart from the fact that many of the others were a random bunch: drunks, thieves, liars, libertines, madwomen, soldiers, slaves, noblemen, servants – and taxmen. We think we are flummoxed by the cognitive dissonance arising from the difference between the ideal and the actual. We think we struggle with modernity. So did they.